"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of the opportunity provided to serve self-interest when Al Gore created the internet; and we should also thank Mark Zuckerburg and Jack Dorsey for creating Facebook and Twitter out of the kindness of their big hearts and not the thinness of their small wallets."

-Ben Franklin, Autobiography (1742)

Friday, March 30, 2012

Andrew Jackson: On the Etymology of Ass-Hat

This past week President Obama made a visit to Las Vegas to discuss clean energy. We here at Lost and Founders realized that we have been doing a piss poor job of discussing the alternative energy missions of some of our early Presidents. Today we would like to tell you the story of Andrew Jackson, nicknamed 'Old Hickory' for his green thumb and and love of the environment. To set the stage the first thing that we have to realize is that things were a little bit different in the 1830's. We all know that rainbows were invented in the Venetian Dyeing Guilds during the 1400's, but we had yet to domesticate the pink-hued Unicorn that Obama rides into meetings.

Old Hickory had an obvious hatred for the Second Bank of the United States of America. He wanted to create a way for the economy to flourish, but also wanted to disguise this idea as a simple piece of alternative energy legislation. He designed the poorly named D.E.B.T Project. DEBT was known as Dam, Energy, Beaver Trade. The idea was simple, dam the Mississippi River create a hybrid beaver, donkey breed to inhabit the region and harvest the animal to further support the American Fur Company and satiate England's desire for beaver top hats. His thought was that by creating a hybrid beaver/donkey they would have an animal that would have larger pelts and thus create more fur. Damming the Mississippi would create the habitat and passage of the bill could be framed as a way to create alternative forms of energy by diverting the river for numerous watermills.

Jackson talked to Lewis and Clark and had them do some potential drawings of a hybrid Beaver
Donkey:

The drawings combined with support from the Watermiller's of America would allow the proposal fly through Congress. Jackson was very wrong. He immediately became the butt of every joke in Washington DC. His idea for a cross-species hybrid was met with much skepticism and he became known as Old Hickory Ass-Hat. This phrase, of course, became poplar as it hit all of blogs and people began posting leaflets on other people's doors that labeled them as Ass-Hats. The truly unfortunate bystander to this entire debacle was the American Fur Company. Due to the public joking beaver hats quickly became unpopular and people detagged their daguerreotypes. The company failed and Jackson finished his tenure as President.